2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 91,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Warfarin and cancer

Having been on warfarin myself for over a year now – because of an arrythmia I wondered what it was doing to my cancer risk. I reasoned that the anti-clotting effect must help prevent cancer spreading, I quickly came across the following article and it seems I was right.

http://www.psa-rising.com/medicalpike/warfarin-prevention-jly00.htm

“Now evidence suggests that oral blood thinners, anticoagulants, or vitamin K antagonists may protect against cancer. (It is not yet known whether these drugs might have such as an effect on prostate cancer once it has developed.) In a study published in the June 29 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Sam Schulman, M.D., and colleagues at the Karolinska Hospital in Sweden found (as expected) that risk of cancer in patients treated for a blood clot was higher than for the population at large — but for patients who took a six-month course of warfarin or dicumarol, it was strikingly lower compared to patients who took only a six-week course.

Of 854 patients who had a blood clot in the leg or lung, 419 received a blood thinner for six weeks and 435 took it for six months. The patients were followed for up to sixteen years (mean of 8.1 years). The rate at which they developed cancer was compared with expected numbers based on national incidence rates.

Of the 854 people on the study (all of whom had had clots), 111 (13 percent) developed cancer for the first time during follow-up. “The risk of newly diagnosed cancer after a first episode of venous thromboembolism is elevated during at least the following two years.” the authors state. “Subsequently, the risk seems to be lower among patients treated with oral anticoagulants for six months than among those treated for six weeks.”

Patients who took blood thinners for six months were one-and-a-half times less likely to develop cancer than those who took it for only six weeks. Only 45 patients (10.3 percent) developed cancer in the six-month treatment group compared with sixty-six patients (15.8 percent) in the six-week treatment group. “The difference was mainly due to the occurrence of new urogenital cancers,” Dr. Schulman says. There were only 12 cases in the six-month group (2.8 percent) compared with 28 cases in the six-week group (6.7 percent).

After six years, those who had six months of warfarin showed only about an 8 percent risk of getting a cancer while those in the six-week-treatment group had a 15 percent risk.

“Our findings strongly support the impression that warfarin has an [anti-cancer] effect,” the authors say. They add that this “will remain controversial” until a biochemical reason for this effect can be found.

In an accompanying editorial, Christoph C. Zielinski, M.D. and Michael Hejna, M.D. of University Hospital, Vienna, Austria ask:

“Should the information presented by Schulman and Lindmarker influence the practice of clinical oncology? It should, by raising awareness of the risk of certain cancers in patients with idiopathic thromboembolism. The necessity of appropriate follow-up in these patients is clear. But should patients with cancer or even healthy persons with a high risk of cancer receive anticoagulants, on the basis of these data? For now, the answer must be no.”

Anticoagulants lower the risk from clotting but raise the risk of bleeding. Schulman has already stated that six months is best for the average patient: “The optimal duration of anticoagulation … has been extensively investigated. For the majority of patients a treatment duration of 6 months eliminates the high risk of relatively early recurrences without yielding an increase in the incidence of major haemorrhages.”

MMR and autism

Mike Adams at Natural Health News is one of these over the top, instant hysteria advocates for natural health – some caution always needs to be paid to his views. However, he provides an excellent information service. here is an extract from a recent article on the MMR controversy containing some useful links:

You can watch a full interview between Dr. Wakefield and Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, in which Dr. Wakefield shares his side of the story concerning his study here:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=608256A446123276E4E72A5351322186

If this is not enough, an IOM report released last year openly admits that MMR can cause vaccine-induced measles, febrile seizures, anaphylaxis, and transient arthralgia in women and children, which make it far from the safe vaccine that authorities claim it is. (http://www.naturalnews.com/033447_Institute_of_Medicine_vaccines.html). And an Italian court recently ruled that MMR indeed triggered autism in a young boy who developed severe bowel problems and various autism spectrum disorders, including the inability to speak, after receiving the MMR. (http://www.naturalnews.com/036255_MMR_autism_court_case.html)

The full article caqn be found at http://www.naturalnews.com/036801_free_speech_autism_website.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036801_free_speech_autism_website.html#ixzz2nKjeIKLD

Why the health properties of vitamins and natural oils will never be proven

I recently had the good fortune of meeting Dr Matthew Illsley, a Biomaterials Research Fellow at Brighton University’s School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences. We got talking about the situation that I know from personal experience about the incredible healing properties of lavender essential oil but that when I raised the question of why it wasn’t used in burns units for example (where it could speed healing and possibly save lives) he explained that the way science is allowed to proceed to establish proofs in real life makes it in practice impossible to research natural substances to the point where we can say they have proven qualities – so we are left to do what our own experiences tell us is the way forward while at the same time having scientists tell us that it is unproven and by implication the stuff of quackery.

I asked Matt to explain all this in writing so that I could share it, which he has very generously done. Here is his answer:

Hi Jonathan
There are a lot of issues around this area, in fact we think about this sort of stuff a lot when trying to design our own experiments and when reading other peoples. We teach long courses on this because basically it cuts across everything.

Before you test a material on any human you need to first have proof that it’s not likely to do any harm. Sometimes people skip or cut corners on this and accidents happen like the one at Northwick Park a few years ago. Link here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22556736

This initial testing involves using cells in culture, animal testing, toxicity and biocompatibility testing, the drug or device has to be intensively tested to be sure it’s “pure” and that its guaranteed to be contaminant free, this includes insuring that it’s never had bacteria in it (sometimes this is done using the blood of crabs http://deepseanews.com/2013/08/how-horseshoe-crabs-may-have-saved-your-life/) there are a lists and lists of required testing on the FDA website.

Then once you have assurances that initial testing in the lab has gone well you can move onto people. This is sometimes years down the road. First you test various concentrations on healthy people to be sure it won’t be harmful, this is because no matter how much work you did above essentially you can never tell what will happen. Most of us have come to accept that this is a little bit mad; prior work does inform dosage and if things are really toxic they don’t get as far as people etc.

Once you’ve proved it’s not going to kill outright you can move onto people that really might need it, here the ethical considerations are myriad. Basically if you are a patient and are told there are no approved medicines for what you have but we’re trying x, you’ll probably want to have x. So there is a lot of pressure on the patient to accept any treatment offered, the ethics are supposed to be an attempt to mitigate this. There are committees, forms for patients, next of kin, clinicians, the committee looks at the study you suggest and try’s to take the role of protecting the patient from undue harm that has been unintentionally forgotten about in the rush to test.

Once ethics are in place the study size and composition are very important (they’re also ethically approved) this guide to critically examining research goes over the study size issues: http://www.olemiss.edu/celi/Files/step-by-step-guide-to-criti-research-part-1-quantitative-reseawrch.pdf

The experiment type is perhaps in the end the most important thing, does the thing you’re testing work? The only way anyone will know is if you designed the experiment properly.

There are lots of types of experiment but generally considered the current gold standard are double blind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_experiment

Double blind trials are where absolutely nobody directly involved with the project knows which drug is which and who is getting what, the test results are also done without knowing. This ensures that no funny business goes on, and only when the results are unveiled and everything has been finalised does anyone find out. Protecting this information and ensuring the right people get the right drug in a large drug trial is often contracted out: http://www.outsourcing-pharma.com/Clinical-Development/CROs-Slowly-Shifting-to-Adaptive-Clinical-Trial-Designs

This whole thing is massive business. Taking a drug from discovery to market is often quoted as costing around £1 – 1.5 bn. http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/08/11/how-the-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs-is-shaping-the-future-of-medicine/

This massive cost is often why large pharma doesn’t touch vitamins, natural oils and historic (silver like) compounds, they’ll not be able to patent the “invention” and therefore can’t guarantee they’ll recoup the cash spent.

So, because this is the setup if you approach a clinician and say I want to test my oil on burns he’s automatically thinking it’ll be too much work/the ethics/ I already have something I know works/your oil isn’t properly tested/you’ve not done it through the right channels.”

My Comment: So there is the answer. Science is a game and the rules and practicalities rig the way it is played. So we’ll never be able to say it is scientifically proven. So, in relation to any form of natural healing we need to trust our own observations and experiences and base our actions on these.

Not just cancer! – Alzheimer’s and vitamins

Here is a quote from a story about Alheimer’s and Dementia:

“The failure to take the likes of diet, exercise and supplements seriously is very galling because at Oxford we’ve shown it’s possible to slow down the Alzheimer’s type brain shrinkage with B vitamins costing pennies a day. Yet scientists still regularly claim there is no way to modify the progression of this ghastly disease. What they mean is there’s no drug to do that. A senior scientist with a pharmaceutical company made this very clear when he spoke to me after I’d given a talk about my research. He described the result as ‘phenomenal’, adding: ‘If it had been a drug, it would be worth billions’. For the sake of all of us, and our families, ignoring all sorts of possible treatments just because they won’t make billions can’t go on.” David Smith is Emeritus professor of pharmacology at Oxford University and founder of the research project OPTIMA (Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2521024/Alzheimers-Stop-trying-cure-Alzheimers–prevent-instead-One-Britains-dementia-experts-says-weve-wasted-BILLIONS-useless-drugs.html

GMOs and cancer

Here is the link to an interesting promo that contains info about the impact of GMO foods on health – as usually slightly hysterical but seems to be based on good fact

http://landing.personalliberty.com/gmo/gmo-deadly-poisons-BGMO_LP01.aspx?SC=P09547166

Health benefits of coconut oil

Here is a link to an article that outlines the evidence for a range of benefits for coconut oil – and they don’t mention the fact that it is a highly effective sunscreen

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/13-evidence-based-medicinal-properties-coconut-oil

Germ killing cancer cure?

Message I received from Ian Jacklin:

formally known as IV-7: This is sold as a germ killing cleaning product cause it does do that too. And due to “mass murdering FDA” rules they can’t tell you what else it does. It’s basically like MMS (miracle mineral solution) and Colloidal Silver only better. Plus it does not taste bad and you don’t have to mix it.

There are other products on the market that use silver — but it is important for you to know that they are NOT the same technology as IV-7 Ultimate Germ DefenseTM! Here is the difference: IV-7 contains Stabilized Ionic Silver. The other products do not. Colloidal silver products contain small particles of silver suspended in aqueous solution. The main composi- tion of colloidal silver is metallic silver, but it may also contain silver oxide and other silver complexes. Silver colloids release minute quantities of ionic silver over time, predominantly through surface oxidation, and dis-sociation from silver complexes. Numerous complex and expensive processes have been developed to manu-facture colloidal silver and this has resulted in large product variability.
In comparison, IV-7 Ultimate Germ Defense contains fully active stabilized ionic silver — silver dihydrogen citrate (SDC), at a specific concentration of 30 parts per million – thousands of times higher than colloidal sil- ver but with exponentially less total silver mass. The patented process developed to manufacture SDC pro- vides stabilized ionic silver in aqueous citric acid solution. This economical process results in superior product quality and performance.
• Only stabilized ionic silver, the SDC in IV-7 Ultimate Germ Defense, has been scientifically proven and registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to have quick and powerful broad spectrum antimicrobial, antifungal and antiviral efficacy.
• The SDC in IV-7 Ultimate Germ Defense works faster than any other silver-containing product on the market today.
• IV-7 Ultimate Germ Defense provides powerful protection while using extremely low levels of stabilized ionic silver when compared to the less effective colloidal silver products that contain much more silver.
• IV-7 Ultimate Germ Defense is stable and will remain efficacious for years when stored properly.
• IV-7 Ultimate Germ Defense has an EPA Category IV hazard rating: the safest rating for any product!

http://www.iv7germdefense.com/